I really think the return to paganism began with Martin Luther, insisting on one's own respomsibility for one's relation to the divine

I'm going to Dingus Day Buffalo tomorrow. The women use pussy willow branches to whip the men of choice and men use squirt guns, or beer depending on the occasion to squirt or splashed the girls. Is this not a direct descendant of some pagan spring ritual reemerged; it is celebrated as Polish but pick the time in the last couple thousand years and the region is probably a third of Europe, so that doesn't really narrow it down at all. It's got to be a strong tradition that survived thanks to the importance it had as ritual. I can't wait to experience it and derive what I can of the basics of the original ritual. Maybe one of you guys can try and suggest a pagan group to whom it may be traced. there are so many remnants of what we had but were striped of by the two exclusionist cults from the Isreali area. When I go to these things, there really a tons, St Joseph's Day, there's at least one or two obvious events every month; I can sometimes get down to the original elements of the the ritual, the idea of what it was all about. I will tell you what I found out from this experience.